Friday, February 28, 2020
Time's Up, Gayle!
Fossils, the ERA and disinterested interns have their day in the legislative sun.
Posted By Rich Kane on February 28, 2020, 7:33 PM
Wednesday was a monumental day for old fossils—and we don’t mean Gayle Ruzicka—as the Utah House passed a resolution to establish Utahraptor State Park near Moab. We’re all for protecting the land, and this is certainly a worthy bill, as there are a fuck-ton of dinosaur fossils in the area that need to be protected from dickwads who are digging that shit up and either keeping the ancient souvenirs for themselves or, more likely, hawking them on eBay.
Speaking of dinosaurs—and we do mean Ruzicka: she was on the Hill this week, camped out as she always is with her Eagle Forum cronies against the south wall of the Capitol Café. The pointy teeth, the leathery flesh, the 120-million-year-old thinking—yup, definitely a Ruzickasaurus.
The café is a great place for eavesdropping and people-watching. So we grabbed a seat as close as we could to the very, very busy-looking group of morality cops, hoping to hear something juicy, like “Gosh, we hope nobody finds out that us Eagle Forum people love smoking crack and worshipping Satan.” But sadly, no such luck.
This year, the Eagle Forum is all about stopping lawmakers from passing the Equal Rights Amendment. We could discern their intentions from big red-and-white buttons proclaiming “STOP ERA!” They had some young interns working for them—EF types can’t reproduce, so they have to recruit, just like The Gays!—and they all looked pretty bored. One high-schooler in (of course) an American flag necktie, kept playing with a Rubik’s Cube-like toy and acted busy in front of his laptop screen.
There was also Eagle Forum executive director and eyeliner addict Maryann Christensen, putting way too much salt and pepper on her salad—my gurl knows how to work a shaker into something we usually only see on warning-emblazoned “specialty” websites. We also spotted the group’s executive secretary Rana Williams—perfectly coiffed hair and all; the fumes of hairspray drifting over from the Forum campground was so intense, that we’re certain it caused another inversion.
And looming over everything, a giant wall clock, ticking the Utah Eagle Forum’s time down, as more and more younger Utahns flee from their ultra-religious conservatism. Hey, Gayle—step into this tar pit and see what happens!
About The Author
Rich Kane
"I love writing revealing stories that peel away Utah's stereotypes," Kane, a City Weekly contributor since 2018, who earned his stripes at OC Weekly, says.
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